The tattoos he has are particularly striking. What is the story behind them?
(Trigger Warning: Blood, gore and death)
(An eye looking up with barren trees coming up from the eyelashes and ice along the lower lid on his right shoulder)
“You drew this yourself?” The tattoo artist asked, tracing the stencil carefully onto his client’s shoulder.
Pathyn leaned back in the chair, eyes half-lidded, his body loose from the calming herbs weaving their way through his veins. “My sister did.”
The paper-thin outline staining his skin didn’t hurt, but the needle would. The thought of someone pressing ink into him over and over didn’t sound like anyone’s idea of fun, yet the art called to him, demanded to be made permanent.
The artist glanced up, studying him. Pathyn’s features were strong, that jawline sharp enough to draw attention without effort. He forced his gaze back down, reminding himself of boundaries; admiration was one thing, acting on it was another. “Any special meaning to it?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.
“Something I saw in a dream once.” Pathyn’s voice was calm, but a faint grimace pulled at his mouth. “A forest burning. Trees like blackened bones, their branches curling in on themselves as if they were alive and screaming. Animals burst from the flames, antlers tangled in fire, wings leaving trails of cinders in the sky. But they didn’t escape.” His brow furrowed as he spoke. “The blaze swallowed them, then froze. Not like winter, colder. The fire turned to glass, and the ground cracked beneath my feet, hollow as if the world itself had been scooped out. I could still hear the creatures moving under the ice, trapped, but alive.”
The needle artist slowed, unsettled despite himself. “That doesn’t sound like a pleasant dream.”
Pathyn opened his eyes, meeting the man’s gaze for a heartbeat. In the shop’s muted light, the glow in his irises seemed almost too sharp, too old. “It isn’t. It comes back again and again.” His voice softened to something almost resigned. “Maybe putting it on my skin will bind it there, instead of in my sleep.”
The shop fell quiet, save for the faint hum of the machine warming in the artist’s hand. Pathyn leaned back, closing his eyes once more. He waited, steady and resigned, for the hours of pain to begin.
(Crescent moon with clouds obscuring parts on left shoulder)
The night sky towered above him, stars blurring through drink and tears. He snatched up a stone and hurled it at the heavens, as if it could strike the pale curve of the moon. His voice tore raw into the quiet woods:
“You BITCH! You don’t deserve worship. You should be dragged down from your perch and made to suffer as you make us suffer.”
His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the leaf strewn ground. Tears streaked his face, hot against the cool night air. “She was so young,” he choked, his voice breaking. “They shouldn’t have caught her… Demons should be burned from Azeroth, every last one of them.”
Memories bled unbidden into his grief. His sister, white-haired from birth, trailing after him with all the stubbornness of youth. He’d been centuries older, but she still found ways to needle him as though they were equals.
“Why aren’t you married yet?” she asked, hands on her hips, chin tilted up at him. “Min’da wants more grandchildren. You won’t stay her favorite if you don’t start soon.”
He’d looked down at her then, silver eyes full of amusement. “I will not have children. That’s our sisters’ duty, not mine. I am not built for it.”
She’d scooped up an acorn and hurled it at his chest. “You know what I mean. Why are you such a pain?”
“And why are you so bothersome?” he retorted from the branches above, perched in his favorite tree. “I barely want to come home at all between you and the rest of the women clucking over me.”
He thought of Araneth then, a century at his side, no vows needed. Love didn’t require bonds or ceremony. He was certain of that.
Another acorn had smacked him in the leg. He’d winced, then laughed.
“Soon I’ll find a partner,” Melenisse declared. “A man like Kyean, and we’ll be happy together.”
“Someone who spends his life asleep in a barrow?” Pathyn asked. “Doesn’t sound like much joy to me.”
Her glare had been fierce for a woman so young. “Stop it, Path! You know the druids serve us all. Elune blesses their slumber. At the temple they teach us how much she loves us and has gifted them with their slumber to protect the dream that binds us all to it.”
The memory cracked like glass, giving way to the storm-heavy night. Pathyn dragged himself back to the present, to the crescent moon hanging behind racing clouds. He hurled another stone at it, but when it dropped back down it wasn’t stone at all.
It struck him on the head with a dull thud.
An acorn.
Of course it was.
(A pair of trees on a craggy cliff face with a waterfall in the middle on his right pec)
He looked up at the cliff face where a waterfall spilled through a break in the mountainside. “Are you sure about this?” he asked, glancing at Sysvien, his middle sister.
“Willowseer already moved with the main group. They’ll keep the demons busy while we climb and strike from behind. A two-pronged attack.”
These were the demons that had sacrificed their sister. It would be their small family who answered: three siblings and eight cousins, including Kyeanadril, called from his slumber to help avenge Melenisse.
“It will be a wet climb,” Pathyn muttered.
Sysvien snorted. “Do not tell me you are so sweet the water will melt you. We both know you’re just sour. Come on, if we delay, we’ll lose our chance.”
“I’m going.” Pulling on his enchanted climbing gloves, Pathyn leapt up and claimed a handhold, quickly matching his sister’s pace. He shouldn’t have been smiling, considering why they climbed, but the challenge reminded him of racing his twin. When he glanced over, he caught Sysvien smiling too.
A sound rose from above: a low, bestial growl. Kyean, restless for the fight. If his cousin hadn’t been one of the most patient men Pathyn knew, the great cat would already be tearing through the demons, outnumbered or not.
Pathyn hurried his climb, knowing Sysvien would take longer, her bow demanded higher ground so she was headed up further. At the top, he stripped off his gloves, drew his knives, and slicked their edges with poison. Then he melted into the cliffside shadows, slipping forward toward the camp.
No sentries watched the rear. A force this size needed none, so long as the cliff shielded their backs.
The signals came sharp in the night. Sysvien’s nail rasped along her bowstring. A great cat’s chuff rolled like thunder. A raven’s caw split the silence further out in the trees by the road.
Pathyn moved. Boots whisper-quiet over the jagged stone, every step measured, every breath controlled. From the forest ahead rose the scream of a dying warrior, raw, piercing, and perfectly timed. The battle at the camp’s front had begun. All eyes and ears would be drawn there.
In the shadows at the rear, the stealthy duo slipped closer. Their war was not in the open clash, but in the silent cut, the precise strike.
The shadow embraced him and in one breath he covered thirty feet, stepping behind the first demon he encountered, a fel guard, dark steel flashing reaching around. The dagger carved across his eyes, the gash torturously painful. Hot blood sprayed from its face, the scent bitter on his tongue. The demon struggled, spraying a mist that stank of rot and copper, before the second blade slit so deep into its throat its spine cracked. The body dropped with a shudder, twitching until its lungs wheezed their last.
Heat pressed around him, thick with the musk of fel magic. Then, voices. Two succubi glided from the shadows, hips rolling like waves, tails twitching. Their perfume hit him like wine and honey poured over fire. His mouth went dry, his stomach knotted tight. Promises of flesh, warmth, pleasure whispered in his mind until his pulse throbbed with aching want. His feet nearly carried him toward them, and then came their ruin.
Kyean slammed into one from the dark, jaws closing on her throat. The crunch of bone split the night, followed by a wet tearing as he ripped her spine. She had shrieked once, high and sharp, before collapsing into a heap of meat and smoke. At the same moment, Sysvien’s arrows cracked through the eye sockets of the other’s skull. Fel-bright eyes burst like eggs, spraying glowing pulp down her face as she crumpled, twitching.
Kyean spat his muzzle dripped ichor, glowing faintly as it ate at the fur. He bared his teeth at Pathyn, a savage grin that reeked of mockery.
Then a polearm whistled overhead. The cat flattened, stomach brushing dirt. Pathyn lunged, the pointed tip shrieking as it punched through chain, scraping along ribs as the dagger drove deep. He twisted, dragging serrations at the base through lung and heart. The hole in fel guard’s chest opened with a hideous squelch, and black foam bubbled out of its mouth before it toppled, limbs spasming. The reek of the fel blood thickened in the air.
The camp boiled. Tent flaps ripped open. Warlocks moved forward, screaming spells, opening great gates that vomited shrieking imps. Wrath guards poured out, blades dripping with fel poisons. And then, its shadow fell.
The dreadlord. Wings stretched wide, blotting torchlight, eyes like burning coals in a furnace.
Pathyn disappeared. Shadows peeled around him, folding space. He reappeared behind the monster, knives already plunging. One slid beneath a shoulderplate, grating along bone. The other ripped into the side, bursting through organs. Boiling ichor exploded across his hand, burning his resistant leather with acid heat. The foulness was unbearable, sulfur and rotting meat, clinging in his throat.
He ripped free. The dreadlord spun, claws like scythes lashing out. An arrow punched through its throat with a wet crack. It snarled, wrenched the shaft free, ribbons of flesh tearing loose in its grip, spraying a mist of blood that sizzled where it landed, smoking holes into the dirt.
Pathyn melted back into shadow and reemerged low. His blade hooked behind the tendon of one knee, slicing it cleanly. The other leg he shattered with a brutal kick, the crunch of bone echoing as the creature dropped, bellowing in a voice that rattled the air.
Arrows thudded into its torso. Kyean leapt high over Pathyn, landing with a sound like splitting wood. His claws gouged furrows so deep that ribs were exposed, and then his jaws locked behind the demon’s ears. He shook like a wolf breaking a stag’s neck, tearing skin, snapping veins. Hot blood sprayed across his chest, Pathyn turning to take it on his back rather than his face.
All three lashed out. This wasn’t war. It was destruction. It was revenge.
Another fel guard charged. Shadows peeled wide, vomiting Pathyn into its path. His knives crossed in a blur, carving an X across its body. Skin and armor split. Meat ripped open. A flood of steaming entrails spilled down in a rush, splattering over his boots, coating the rocks in a glistening slick that hissed where fel corruption met stone. The rancidity of acid and feces punched through the air, it was enough to choke on. The guard wailed until Pathyn’s heel slammed its throat flat, cartilage crunching into pulp.
The dreadlord still writhed. Arrows pinned its wings to the earth. Kyean tore chunks from its spine, spitting glowing gore into the dirt. Sysvien’s bowstring thrummed like a heartbeat, each arrow bursting flesh, each impact a hammer driving the beast toward death.
Pathyn stepped from the shadows behind it, blades dripping black. The stink of sulfur and rot filled every breath, coating his tongue until he gagged. He pressed both daggers in, one into the base of the skull, one through the chest cavity, the he jerked upward.
Bone cracked. Flesh ripped. The dreadlord’s body split open with a noise like wet canvas tearing. A flood of blood and half-dissolved organs spilled down onto the granite, hot enough to scald the lichen away. The demon toppled, wings twitching. Its death cry ripped through the trees, then faded to a wet rattle as its lungs emptied, gurgling as the last of its air was pumped out.
Chaos from the front of the camp had done its job, none of the demons looked,to the back of the camp, they were dying too fast at the hands of his oldest sister, her fighters and Priestesses of Elune’s temple.
They hadn’t killed the dreadlord cleanly. They hadn’t wanted to.
This was for Melenisse.
(Thank you for the question @safrona-shadowsun . I hope this didn’t disappoint)
